


Can’t Always Get What You Want

by Lokkish



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-15
Updated: 2016-03-02
Packaged: 2018-05-01 16:55:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5213633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lokkish/pseuds/Lokkish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Living in the Underground can be hard. No one could tell you that better than Sans. While there are upsides there are also downs and all he wants to do is make sure Papyrus is happy. From beginning to end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: If not you, than who?

**Author's Note:**

> Wanted to clarify that this first chapter is a Prologue and after this there will be a change of perspective. Don't want there to be that many surprises later.

When all you get in life are lemons how are you expected to make lemonade? Without sugar and water all you can really make is lemon juice, a bearable but otherwise bitter drink that others are forcing you to take. How is that any better than just having the lemons? Yet, for Sans life’s never been too terrible. There is always at least one thing that he can count on to brighten it up. 

Papyrus, his baby brother. 

If Sans could get his baby brother to smile just once a day his own day was already improving. While this was easy when the kid was younger, it has been getting harder and harder as he has grown. 

Papyrus was 150 years of age on this pleasant Winter Solstice, quite a momentous occasion to be sure. For skeleton turning 150 years old signified that they were no longer a kid, but a full blown young skeleton. Like the human’s young adult, the young monster was expected to start looking or training for their future career. While monsters did have schooling for kids that wasn’t meant to train them for work, just to teach them the basics of how the world works including their ABC’s and 123’s. An apprenticeship was needed to start on a career path. They could do anything they wished, as long as they could get a grown monster to teach them the trade. With Papyrus it was never much of a question about what he planned on doing for his own career. He wanted to be part of the Royal Guard and protect the kingdom, just like his big brother. 

It was no secrete that Sans was officially part of the Royal Guard his title was Royal Guard’s Last Line of Defense to the King, ya it’s a mouthful but the King was never good at naming things. Regardless, what a cool job right! Well sure the title was nice, but no one outside of Sans and the King actually knew what his job actually entailed. In reality he was essentially a fancy guard dog that never really stopped anyone from going to see the King. As long as they weren’t a threat to the King, anyone could come and go whenever they wanted. 

No one wanted to hurt the King, as he was a beacon of hope to many monsters within the underground. So most of Sans time was just hanging out in the middle of Judgment Hall twiddling his thumbs that was before the King allowed him to take on other jobs. Which begs the question, why would he want to take on other jobs? One would assume such a snazzy title would come with a pretty nice paycheck, and everyone knew how lacadazakle Sans could be if given the opportunity. Yet, if anyone thought that the money was good they would be surprised to find out that they were wrong. He gets paid bupkis, think along the lines of 5G a day, which is less than 2000G a year. When a single meal at Grillby’s is 5000G well let’s just say paying for the house isn’t even close to being that cheap. So of course he’s had to pick up a few other gigs, more than five other gigs to be frank. 

Now at the end of the day this job is less than ideal, but if there is anything that Sans hates it’s the feeling of being utterly useless and there is nothing more that this job does than that. Let's say someone was in Judgment Hall and they actually did want to engage the king in battle that’s not good enough. There is an even more ridiculous regulation enacted recently, thanks to a spunky kid in his life, were he could only engage a threat if the being was 19 LV or above. Only then, if all these stipulations were met could he engage an enemy. Which begged Sans to wonder what exactly was he there for, as his job seemed to be nothing more than him taking up space in Judgment Hall. It was a frustratingly crappy and painfully boring, and not one that he had any real say in doing either. It was either this or he could say good bye to Papyrus, and that wasn’t something Sans was going to entertain. 

So he took the crappy job and it’s shitty pay. It was a good thing being the King’s personal lap dog entailed a lot of down time, because only with the other jobs was he anywhere close to giving Papyrus the life that Sans felt he deserved. Honestly, it’s no surprise Sans was so tired all the time, but he would never tell Papyrus that. The kid didn’t need to know how close they were to being out on the street all the time. 

Sans always worked hard to make sure that Papyrus was happy. So after his 150th birthday party when Papyrus excitedly asked Sans if he could train him to be in the Royal Guard, it tore San’s soul a bit to have to say no. Yet, what else was he going to tell Papyrus? Sure, Sans is part of the Royal Guard, but like he was just saying it was essentially under duress. Sans wasn’t trained to be in the Royal Guard, he was trained to be a scientist something that obviously didn’t exactly pan out. Sans didn’t know how to train Papyrus even if he wanted to, which to tell the truth he actually sorta did. 

Being in the Royal Guard isn’t a bad gig if you weren’t stuck in San’s predicament. They actually have a tendency to be paid fairly well in fact and there were many aspects that Papyrus could advance career wise if he so wished. So sure, why not? Papyrus wasn’t weak and while he could be a bit naive at some times, he was still young. Sans was sure Papyrus could make a good Guard if he really wanted it. 

So when Sans said no, he didn’t mean “No Papyrus couldn’t be in the Royal Guard,” but “No I can’t train you.” Unfortunately, Sans wasn’t able to adequately relay this before Papyrus tried to run and lock himself up in his room, orange tears falling from his eyes. Before he made it far Sans grabbed the young skeleton’s arm.

“You know Undyne is the Captain of the Royal Guard, and she doesn’t have any apprentices right now. Maybe she -” Sans wasn’t all that prepared for the wail that his brother let out at his suggestion, before Papyrus yanked his arm back and ran to his room slamming his door closed, emphasizing his disappointment. The kid always had a bit of a tantrum streak in him if he didn’t get his way.

Sighing Sans rubbed the back of his head, figuring he should give the kid his space for the night. ‘Best to try and talk to him again tomorrow,’ he thought as he decided it would be best to talk to Undyne before he went to bed himself. Slipping into a shortcut to Undyne’s place he was knocking on her door moments later. While he was pretty sure she would give Papyrus the apprenticeship, he wanted to make sure before Papyrus got to her. He didn’t know if he could stand Papyrus being disappointed more than once over this. 

“Who is it?” A gruff voice said from the other side of the door, which Sans couldn’t help but laugh at a bit. As a fish out of water Undyne’s voice was always a little horse, but he was sure he must have woken her up because she was impressively rough tonight. Sometimes he wondered what she sounded like in water. It would probably be at least a little smoother and less like she had a frog in the throat all the time.

“It’s Sans.” 

“Sans?” Undyne opened the door to her small friend. “What are you doing here Sans? Isn’t it Papyrus’ birthday today? I thought he was going to have some sort of big party.” As she talked Undyne had a frown on her face, the skeleton bros and her had been friend since before she became Captain of the Guard. 

Sans and her met when she was Papyrus’ age, remember that kid who changed the rules from general threats out to hurt the King, to threats that were LV of 19 or above? That was thanks to a younger Undyne and her own unique brand of unwavering determination. When she was Papyrus’ age she kept trying to go see the King but she never had an appointment, which was a big no no back then and required Sans to be in Judgment Hall to ‘greet’ her. At the time she was determined to become Empress and figured that she had to kill the King to do it. Well, this made her Sans’ first official ‘problem.’ Looking back on it now proves to be an interesting first few interactions. 

In the end, she was never really going to kill the King as she wasn’t strong enough but Sans had to keep turning her around as he couldn’t allow her to attack the King either. With some words, a lot of dodging, and a bit more patience he was able to convince her to go home, and every morning she would come back even more determined to get passed Sans. Eventually they ended up talking. First, it was about why she was trying to get to the King and why she wanted to become Empress, and a bit about who Sans was as well. Through these frequent interactions they learned a lot more about each other than either one of them probably wanted to share, and after a few failed attempts of assassination on Undyne’s part Sans was able to convince her that becoming Captain of the Royal Guard was her best option to getting her desired goals.. 

When she finally agreed Sans allowed her to pass, granting her access to fight the King. Everyone knows how that went, for that’s the actual story that Undyne liked to tell. She always thought her and Sans’ fight was much more a private occasion. One that sparked their friendship and had no place in being told to others to explain why and how she became Captain of the Royal Guard. 

That was about 70 years ago, and Undyne managed to successfully become Captain in 50 years, which is impressive for a job that usually takes at least 100 years to acquire and the old captain has to either retire or die before a successor was chosen. Sans has no idea how she convinced the old captain to retire so early, he was only 1000 years old, young for a fire elemental. Granted, if Sans had any say the fire elemental made a better bar owner anyways. 

“Oh ya, the party was a real _Skele_ bration alright.” Undyne groaned a bit at Sans joke but had a smile on regardless. “But all the kids went home already, it’s like 11 pm, and Pap is in bed too. He’s well, to say disappointed is about right.”

“Oh? Come in and explain what happened. Jasmine tea sound good?” Undyne opened her door a little wider as an invitation for Sans to enter. 

“Ya, sounds _tea_ riffic.” Sans chuckled.

“I swear Sans, those get worse and worse everyday.” Undyne said lightly chuckling as she prepared the water for the tea. “So tell me what happened?”

“Well, Papyrus told me who he wanted to apprentice with.”

“That’s good. Someone in the Royal Guard, I assume.”

“You would assume correct.”

“The problem?” Undyne set two cups of tea on her kitchen table, which Sans was already sitting at. 

“He asked me to train him.” There was a pause as Undyne blew off some of the steam coming from her cup and Sans just stared at the cup of golden liquid. 

“I see. That is a bit of a problem, isn’t it.” 

“Yeah.” Sans rubbed the back of his head in frustration. “I mean it’s not a problem if he wants to join the Guard, I would be more than happy if he did -”

“Really?”

“Look I know I kinda got a shit deal, but that in no way means that Papyrus would. He’s a good kid, I mean Skeleton, and he’s strong, at least stronger that a lot of people he knows at school who also want to join the guard, and he’s also fiercely determined. If he wants to be part of the Royal Guard then he should be able to join.”

“Nothing against Papyrus, you know I love you two like brothers, but when I was his age I was fighting you in Judgment Hall.” Sans knew where this was going. They’ve been having the same argument ever since she found out Papyrus wanted to join the Royal Guard last year. Not only did she disprove of it based on how King Asgore treated Sans, but also because she ultimately didn’t want Papyrus to get hurt and found his attacks lacking power.

“Undyne, you were also originally trying to kill the King. I don’t think basing whether Papyrus will be a good addition to the Royal Guard or not is a fair comparison to be making when it comes to your own experience. We’ve been over this.” Sans sighed.

“Maybe, but Sans, you know Asgore has three souls now.”

“And not a single monster will be left out of that fight when it comes, Undyne. Whether or not you train Papyrus makes no difference in that regard.” If Undyne was taking a sip of her tea at that moment she might have done a spit take. As fate would have it though, she was not but her imitation of a fish out of water was never more convincing. 

“Excuse me? Who said anything about _me_ training Papyrus, I thought he asked _you_.”

Sans couldn’t help chuckling. “What do you think I told him Undyne?”

“I don’t know. That you would think about it?”

“Nah, I said ‘No’ right away. Nearly broke the kid's heart. Told him that you didn’t have any apprentices though. You don’t right?”

“What? No, but Sans, I can’t train Papyrus.” 

“Why not?”

“Because, well Sans, it’s Papyrus. I just AGH! Why do you gotta do this?! This is hardly fair!” Undyne was standing now, frustrated. Sans kinda understood where she was coming from. Sans put her in a corner. She was the unofficial big sister, the one that was supposed to dote on Papyrus and never tell him ‘no’ regardless of what it was he was asking for. Sans was supposed to be the one that said ‘no’ to his ridiculous requests, not her. So this gave her two options, say ‘no’ when Papyrus came knocking asking for her to train him. Or to potentially hurt her baby brother in training, because while she was his official big sister that did not mean she would take it easy on him if she was serious about training him. “Wait! I got it!” 

“Yea?” Sans asked lazily.

“I’ll teach him something else!” Undyne snapped her fingers and posed with satisfaction.

“Excuse you?” Sans looked at her confused.

“I know how to cook. I could teach him how to make spaghetti! Then I’m not saying no to training him, it’s just not training him on what he wants to be trained in.” Undyne looked more than pleased with herself, but Sans looked more than skeptical. 

“I’ll say this again. Excuse you? You’d rather lie to Paps and teach him how to make spaghetti than actually train him to be a Royal Guard?” Sans said rolling his eyes.

“I won't be lying, Sans.”

“Coulda fooled me.”

“I’ll still be training Papyrus in my trade.”

“Cooking is your parents trade, not yours anymore.”

“Regardless, by teaching Papyrus to make spaghetti he’ll become obsessed with the art of cooking! When that happens he won't want to be part of the Royal Guard anymore. Then we can get Mettaton to teach him some of the more finer points of cooking and he’ll become a famous chef! It’s perfect!” Undyne was super excited about her master plan. Sans just laughed. 

“And when Papyrus asks why he’s chopping tomatoes instead of punching a practice dummy what will you say.” Sans asked as he reclined in his chair finally drinking some of the now cool tea as he listened to Undyne’s plan.

“Building arm strength!” Undyne said flexing her impressive set of guns.

“Of course.” Sans said unimpressed. “And when this doesn’t work and he still wants to join?”

“I’ll tell him your story.” Sans was even less impressed with that answer and placed his glass down with a strong rap.

“You will do no such thing.” You could always tell when Sans was mad because his eyes went dark.

“When are you going to tell him?” Undyne asked exasperated. “He has the right to know, don’t you think?” 

“No.” 

“He wouldn’t even think about being part of the Guard if you would just tell him” Undyne said in her own angry voice. This was another age old argument between the two, one that has been going on for as long as they’ve known each other. 

“Never, Undyne. Not if I can help it.” They stared each other down from opposite sides of the table for a while before Undyne gave a frustrated huff. 

“Fine. I’ll just have to convince him that cooking is a major part of learning how to become part of the Royal Guard until he either wants to become a chef or you monster up and tell him the truth.” Undyne said not looking at Sans.

“So that’s you saying you’ll do it then; you’ll make Papyrus you apprentice?”

“I guess if I have to.” Neither of them were happy at this point. Each having their own frustrations over the topic. 

“Great.” Sans stood and went to the door.

Undyne couldn’t help herself. “You have to tell him one day Sans.”

Sans half turned to her so that she could only see his unnaturally blue eye.  
“N o. N o I d o n ’ t.” With that Sans was gone. No even pretending to have opened the door. 

Undyne was left standing in her kitchen with a tingling feeling running down her spine. She always felt that Sans could probably creep out the most cold hearted monsters if he really tried. Sighing Undyne went to collect the cups noting that Sans empty cup was warm to the touch. 

He was really mad. 

 

Three days later Papyrus was excitedly telling Sans all about his visit with Undyne and how she agreed to train him. Sans couldn’t have been happier for his brother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update Febuary 18, 2016  
> \- Wanted to clear some confusing dialogue and story telling.
> 
>  
> 
> I want to update this story pretty regularly, but unfortunately I'm not that great at keeping up with these kinds of things. There's a lot more I want to tell in this story so I am hoping I will be motivated enough to get it all down and up online, but only time will tell. I've written various stories and usually don't get past the first chapter unfortunately.  
> So if you never hear from me again and you really loved this story, I'm deeply sorry.
> 
> But let's pretend that I am going to update this regularly. I love constructive criticism, so please, be sure to tell me what you think. I'm always trying to improve so pointing out incorrect grammar, spelling, or just how I can improve my story telling is always welcome.  
> Have a Great Day.


	2. The happy little family

_300 Years before Papyrus’ 150 Birthday_

The CORE was finally finished. After centuries of endless work and failures the complex was finally complete and in working order. Now the real work could start. Officially the CORE was built to provide power to the Underground, allowing for the citizens to have all the conveniences of electric appliances. Unofficially, it is another lab for the famous Royal Scientist, Dr. W. D. Gaster, to work on his many experiments designed to help monster kind exit from the Underground and to once again live upon the Surface. 

The tool for such an escape would require a whole lot of energy to even be minutely possible, so creating a large geothermal electric plant is the first step of many in making it happen. Using this massive collection of energy Gaster was hoping that he could create a type of bomb, cannon, or blaster that could help take down the Barrier. 

The first attempt was a bit of a failure. The idea was to create a bomb made of metal and magic to lob at the Barrier and when it made contact it would explode taking down the barrier. Unfortunately, no such luck. The amount of energy contained within the bomb was not nearly efficient enough to take the Barrier down. The second attempt involved a canon to be placed in front of the Barrier and using a line from the CORE a shot could be fired carrying ten times the amount of energy that the bomb contained. Once again this experiment failed just as amazingly as the last. 

This did not deter the good scientist though, when all his colleagues were disheartened from their lack of success, Dr. Gaster explained that technically the experiments were meant to fail. According to the prophecy, there needed to be souls involved with breaking down the Barrier, something that energy, metal and magic never had. While Dr. Gaster never found himself to be a spiritual monster in the sense that all monsters go to heaven he did have a healthy respect for situations and theories that could not be explained through science alone, it’s pretty hard not to believe in ghosts when you worked with some, so he did find value in historic stories that were only a few thousand years old. 

Thus, these previous experiments were just that, experiments to make sure that energy, metal, and magic actually could not do the job. This also allowed the scientists to gain readings of what happened when brute force alone was tried, and to see what type of energy output would be needed for the project Dr. Gaster was really banking on. 

Dr. Gaster’s true project involved creating a blaster made of monster souls, magic, and energy. He would prefer to do it just like the prophecy said, six human souls and one monster soul, to see if that would take down the Barrier. Yet it was not to be, the last human that entered the underground had died after a few years, and was absorbed into the King and Queen’s son. Now they were both dead, what a waste. 

Children could be so irrational sometimes. Imagine the advancements he could have made in taking down the Barrier permanently if the foolish prince had let him examine the human child before he did something as reckless absorbing their soul and going to the surface to try and lay his dead friend to rest. Now he was dead as well and Dr. Gaster could only reminisce on what could have been. There are rumors that the King's child came back to life in the form of a Yellow Flower, but that was just ridiculous. Reincarnation was not a real occurrence, but it did give Gaster ideas. 

To manipulate multiple monster souls in one source and allow it to concentrate the massive amount of magic that such a source would have on the Barrier, that might just be enough to at least significantly dent the Barrier. Then add giving the source access to the CORE’s energy you should be able to take down the Barrier for good. After all if seven human souls and one monster soul is said to take down the barrier, what could all the energy from the CORE and about seven hundred no seven hundred and fifty, just to be safe, monster souls do? Dr. Gaster was interested in finding out. 

“Dear, dinner’s ready. Will you be joining me or do you want me to pack some up for you to eat later?” Gaster looked up to see his wife looking at him from his home office door, a beautiful skeletal female with large eyes and a permanent radiating smile on her face. Smiling he stood to join her. 

“I will be more than pleased to join you my darling, what I am doing right now can wait a few moments for me to enjoy dinner with my beautiful wife.” Approaching her Gaster lightly brushed his forehead against hers. “How are you feeling today, my dear Helvetica?”

“Much better,” Helvetica placed her hand over her chest. “The baby’s been calmer lately. Barely giving me any trouble at all.”

Smiling Gaster placed his own hand over his wife chest. “I’m glad, I was getting worried. A little birthing sickness is normal, but it was becoming constant for a while there. Now what’s for dinner?”

“Well I was hungry for brunch, so I made a quiche.” Helvetica laughed and made her way towards the dining room. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course not, I love your quiche.” Gaster followed behind.

“What were you working on?” Helvetica asked as they approached the dinner table set for two. 

“Still trying to figure out how to get a bunch of souls into a single source.” Gaster sighed as he sat and cut up a slice of quiche to serve to his wife.

“Thank you, dear.” She smiled. “Have you even asked King Asgore if this was a project he was willing to back. Collecting all these souls and then placing them in a single source is going to take a massive amount of effort and not many monsters are going to view it as a morally correct action.” 

“Yes, well you see, my public advisor has been out lately, something to do with having a child. I was hoping that the moment she started to feel better and could get back to work, hopefully it would be possible for her to talk to the King.” Gaster smiled. “Dr. Helvetica has such a way with words. If anyone could get the King and monster civilians to agree to my newest hairbrain idea it is sure to be she.” Gaster winked at his wife making her giggle. 

“My, she sound like quite a woman, doesn’t she. If you weren’t already married to her I might just be jealous.” Gaster laughed.

“You know I only have eyes for one beautiful lady my dear. So what say you? Do you think you can get everyone to see the merit in this idea?” 

“Well first off, I’m not your public advisor,” Helvetica laughed, “but I know how much you prefer me asking the King for these things.” Helvetica then looked at her husband seriously. “Honestly dear I have no idea if he’ll go for this. The basic message is good, ‘Be one of the seven hundred souls to take down the Barrier. Your sacrifice will help free all of monster kind.’ Yet, I’m sure you can also hear the moral qualm at the same time. Not everyone is going to see the merit of such a message and will oppose being used as some sort of tool. Being rational is not something that all of monster kind can be known for.”

“Yes, I can see your point. Even the King cannot be considered too rational in his thinking. For centuries we have lived with the barrier with no real move to take it down. Then his son makes it through, gets killed, and now he wishes to take it down? And for vengeance no less. No it’s not all that rational is it.” Gaster sighed himself as the couple went into silence, both thinking on the predicament.

“Are we being rational my dear?” Helvetica asked quietly.

“What?”

“Is it rational for us to not question this idea of harvesting hundreds of souls, putting them in one contraption, and hoping that plus the energy from the CORE will be enough to take down the Barrier? I mean nothing so far has worked so what are the likenesses of this actually working? Not to mention seven hundred souls is just a starting point, no? Depending on the prototypes, we will probably be needing more than just that. I don’t know, sometimes I wonder if the moral argument actually has a place in this.” Helvetica was pushing the last bit of her quiche around as she spoke, not looking at her husband. This made Gaster sigh and place his head in the palm of one of his hands.

“What you say is true my love. It is very likely this is a giant goose chase, and that this idea is not very likely to work. Besides I re-ran the calculations and I figured that seven hundred and fifty should be the new starting point to be safe. So are the lives that this idea will ruin worth the potential success? I don’t know how to answer such a question. It borders too much on a philosophical debate for my liking.” Gaster sighed.

“Fifty more, fifty less, it really makes no difference in the grand scheme of things does it? Maybe we should ask Gerson what he thinks.” Helvetica smirked while Gaster looked at his wife, alarmed at her suggestion.

“Please don’t. You know that old tortoise will do nothing more than tell us that we should not be taking down the Barrier and to wait for the prophecy to come true. Like we all have as much time as that old coot.” Gaster moaned as if he was pain. “Please my dear, do not subjugate me to his company over this.” 

Helvetica could not help but laugh at her husband's childish antics. “I wouldn’t dream of it my dear. But we must remember that King Asgore does value his judgment. It may be necessary to think of an answer for both and not just one, it would at the very least make any answer we do come up with that much stronger.” 

“True. Let’s get some tea and throw some ideas around. How does that sound?” Gaster went to get up and clean off the table. 

“Sounds good to me my love. I’ll get a pot ready.” Helvetica went off to the kitchen to get their favorite jasmine tea prepared. 

The rest of the night revolved on how to get the public to support the newest hairbrain idea of Dr. W. D. Gaster. Just because he was a famous scientist did not mean that the monster citizens would support everything that he proposed. The CORE gave them the modern convenience of electricity, something that in the year 171X didn’t initially give them much in the form of an ease in living, but was full of hope and promises. With the help of some marvelous engineers, such as Alrep and Protile Pogona, they were able to make modern miracles that extended monster health and gave them new distractions. What will creating the Doctor’s Balster give them? 

Well freedom right? 

What more could monsters want than freedom from the underground? But what will be the cost of this freedom? 

“How about the use of inmate souls.” Dr. Helvetica said with a bit of trepidation.

“What my dear?” Gaster asked being pulled from his own thought process.

“We could use inmate souls.” Helvetica said with a bit more pep.

“My dear, monsters are a mostly peaceful race, we don’t exactly have a massive amount of inmates to pull from.” Gaster said taking a sip from his tea. His wife laughed.

“That’s where you are wrong my dear husband. Monsters are mostly peaceful yes, but that does not mean we do not have inmate. We have approximately a thousand inmates, 9 of which are serving life sentences. I can’t believe I didn’t think about it before.” Helvetica started staring off again trapped in her own thoughts. Gaster looked at his wife like he was seeing her for the first time.

“My dear, could you please explain to me how you know there are monsters being held in a prison within the Underground? It’s been mostly common knowledge that there is no such thing for monsters.” Gaster said with a little surprise in his voice. This made his wife laugh again. 

“Gaster please, you can’t possibly buy the notion that every monster that has ever lived in the Underground has had nothing but good intentions.” Helvetica giggled. “Sorry, I shouldn’t laugh I was a bit taken aback as well when I first found out, but I would like to imagine that I wasn’t quite so surprised. I never truly bought the notion that all monsters were essentially good, it was a nice surprise to learn that I was right.”

“Again how exactly do you know of this? And where are they? The Underground isn’t that big, we should know if such a place as a prison existed. Shouldn’t we?”

“Maybe, maybe not. The prison lays below the King's Palace, so it’s hard to know how many people would think that a thousand prisoners were under the same roof as the King himself. I know because I’m working primarily with behavioral therapy, you know that.” Helvetica said looking at her husband to make sure he was following. 

“Oh! Oh my, yes that makes so much sense. I just thought you were, well honestly I was never really too sure, you're always so quiet about your work. So what, you are trying to rehabilitate these poor souls?” Gaster asked with a bit more clarification.

“You could say that, yes. We try to understand them and then work out ways to make them assimilate into society without causing anymore trouble.” Gaster couldn’t help but smile at his wife. 

There were many reasons why Gaster loved Helvetica and her mind was in part a major reason. While Dr. Gaster himself was much more a master of chemistry and biology, his wife was a master in the social sciences. They met while they were both apprenticing at the original Lab in the Hotlands. While they both were focusing in different departments their paths crossed more than a few times, and after they started to get to know each other more their paths became parallels. Both of them working directly under the King was the result of them trying to make sure they could spend more time with each other. She was the King Royal Psychologist, while he was the King’s Royal Scientist. It wasn’t any surprise when the two started dating, and more people were encouraging them to get married then there were those who opposed the two’s relationship. 

“So why exactly is it not common knowledge that the the Underground has, what was it a thousand inmates?”

“Yes dear.” Helvetica laughed. “The Royal Propaganda runs deep. No one wants to believe that there are criminals in the Underground. We all live so close together now it would make people feel unsafe. So people just don’t spread it around when there are rumors. When people encounter a rogue monster they tell the Royal Guard, they take them to King Asgore, the media never says anything about any disturbances and the people live happy. Simple my dear.”

“So no one cares about these ‘rogue’ monsters that are lucky enough to live under King Asgore’s roof?” Gaster asked intrigued.

“Well, yes and no. Of course some of the families ask about them, but most are too ashamed to wonder about them. They either believe them to be dead or have said that they do not wish to know about them anymore and treat them as if they are.” Helvetica looked a little sad over this. “It’s really quite depressing if you think about it. Out of the thousand we are treating only about a dozen actually still have family that still worries about them. Even if we could help them all, only a few would have any family or life that they could go back to. The rest are just lost causes in the grand scheme of things.” said disheartened. 

“Yet the point is to potentially figure out a way to help future cases no?” Gaster inquired hopefully, concerned for his wife’s sudden shift in mood.

“Of course, yes. It’s all about the end result. To figure out what are making the monsters tick and to make sure more don’t become permanent residents within the Castle.” Helvetica smiled at her husband to hopefully dispel any concern about her mood. Gaster smiled back.

“So we could get Asgore to give us seven hundred and fifty of these lost souls?”

“Oh yes, I have no doubt. You know how much he wants the Barrier down right now. If we are using souls from inmates that are viewed to be lost causes anyway there should be no real disagreement. We also won't even need to get citizens involved in this debate, philosophical or not.”

“Very true, saves a whole set of headaches. What of you colleagues also working with this research?” Gaster pondered.

“Not likely to be a problem. I know these people I can get them to back you.” Helvetica said sounding pleased with herself.

“Good to hear.” Gaster looked at the clock on the wall. “Well my dear I do believe that it is time for us to get some rest. I presume you are planning to go to work tomorrow if you are feeling better?”

Helvetica looked at the clock in a bit of shock, it was almost 1:00 am. The two could always talk for hours on end if they weren't careful. “Yes, I do plan on it.” She smiled at her husband who was picking up their tea set and making his way to the kitchen. “I’ll see you upstairs my dear.” 

Slowly Helvetica made her way to the bedroom. Ever since she got pregnant everything seemed to take her longer to do and was exceptionally more difficult, so climbing the flight of stairs was taking her a lot longer than she would have liked. It was no real surprise, babies were known to drain a lot of the mother's magic and seeing as Skeletons were held together with most of their magic reserv it was only logical to expect mothers to become a little sluggish regardless of how much magic they have stored. Finally, getting to the top of the stairs Helvetica stopped for a moment to catch her breath.

“Maybe it would be best if you took one more day off.” Helvetica jumped a bit, not expecting her husband to be behind her. Gaster placed a hand on the small of her back. “Careful my dear. I would hate for you to fall while you are at the top of the stairs.”

Helvetica smiled at her husband. “Well, Mr. Sneaky-Bones maybe you shouldn’t startle me so much and we wouldn’t have to worry about me falling.” She laughed when Gaster looked at her shocked. 

“Yes, I should have kept that in mind.” He said a bit dejectedly. Helvetica cupped his face in her hands. 

“Don’t worry my love, I’m fine.” She touched her head to his. “I love you.”

“I love you as well.” Gaster said as he held his wife in an embrace.

“Let’s go to bed.” Helvetica said moving away. ”We have an important day tomorrow. You will get you souls and can finally really start on getting monsters to the Surface once more.” 

“Yes it is sure to be a momentous day.” Gaster said following his wife to their room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Helvetica Gaster: Wife to the famous Royal Scientist W.D. Gaster.   
> After meeting the now famous scientist when they were just apprentices at the original Lab in the Hotlands, Helvetica quickly became friends with him and they soon started dating. After many years of dating, Gaster felt he should marry the love of his life and proposed to Helvetica who instantly said yes. A few years later Helvetica found out that she was pregnant and that's were we meet up with the happy little family.
> 
> Update: February 18, 2015  
> -Wanted to fix some confusing dialog  
> -Added a bit of history  
> -Changed amount of souls needed for experiment


	3. Chapter 2: Gaining Permission

It was nice to be back at work once more. Ever since Helvetica found out she was pregnant she was having terrible morning sickness that incapacitated her for a great portion of the day. It was no less a reason for her and Gaster to celebrate though. It’s not very often that Skeletons are able to bear children of their own. As a result there weren’t that many skeletons in the Underground, making up about one sixteenth of the total population. Due to the rarity many outside of their small family were also very excited to hear the news, King Asgore being one of the top among them. 

While it’s nice to see so many people excited for the couple it was a bit of a burden to have so many people interested in such a private affair as her birthing process. Every time someone new found out about her little passenger they needed to play 20 questions. 

“No, you cannot see the baby if I remove my shirt Aaron. You should use more sense when talking about these things at work. If the wrong person heard you make that comment it could be considered sexual assault.” Helvetica reprimanded her co-worker that she was playing this silly game with today.

“W-what? N-no I didn’t mean it that way! Of c-course not. I was just curious if, well regularly baby growth happens in the, well you know where, and seeing as you don’t exactly have one I was wondering if maybe you could actually see it.” Aaron stammered obviously taken off guard about how his previous question came out. As the King's Royal Messenger he should have been more tactful about how he worded his questions.

“You know when this is all over and done with I think I’m going to write a book about how skeletons give birth. Obviously there is not enough knowledge on how this done.” Helvetica sighed filling out some of the paperwork lying in her inbox. Thanks to her absences she had a lot of catching up to do with the various requests and reports on the research that her staff was doing. “To answer your question, technically no you can’t see the baby. What happens is that the baby's soul is created near my own slowly forming in the span of a few weeks, months, or years, each child is a bit different, and then when it’s ready me and Gaster will use our bone magic to create a body for the new soul to inhabit. If everything goes well, then we’ll have a new baby skeleton.” 

“Wait this could take years?” Aaron asked a bit flabbergasted. To think about anyone being pregnant for years seemed a bit absurd.

“Yes, Aaron. Each baby is different. The fastest one has ever come out was a few week after they were created, but that’s not exactly the best case scenario. Most of the time, if something like that happens it means that there is some sort of defect with the soul. It can result in various disabilities or mutations. Usually the slower the process is the greater the chance of having a stable soul.” Helvetica was on her third report now, something about needing more nutritious bones for the dog staff. At the top she wrote, “See Nutritional Serves” and put it in her outbox, next. 

“Maybe you _should_ write a book. How much of this is common knowledge?” Aaron asked her.

“Well skeletons have the information passed from one generation to the next. My mother told me all I would need to know about the process, as I’m sure Gaster’s did. Granted, it might be an interesting read for non-skeletons as well.” Helvetica said, next paper something about the new patient that has come in complaining about seeing stripes on everything. Curious. “What are you doing here Aaron, besides getting me started on my book about skeleton birth.” She asked without looking up from the report.

“Oh, right. King Asgore wanted to meet with you. Something about checking with you on a certain flower’s mental status.” Aaron said quietly. “He said when you have time he would love your presence.” 

Helvetica looked at Aaron questioningly.”He wants to ask me about the flower monster he found? What’s wrong with it?” 

“I have no idea Ma'am, he just asked me to ask you to join him when you can. He knows you're busy after just arriving from your sick leave.”

“Right. Well I’m going to finish some more of these papers.” Helvetica looked at the clock noting that it was about 11 am before continuing. “Tell him I’ll be around by about 1 pm. I have something to ask him regarding one of Gaster’s experiments, if he doesn’t mind talking to me about that as well it would be great.” 

“Ah how is your husband. Heard he was having some troubles on his latest attempt to take down the Barrier.” 

“He’s doing much better, we think we’ve made some headway last night actually.” Helvetica said smiling at Aaron. “Now, not that I don’t love your company Aaron, but if that will be all I have a lot more work to get done before my meeting with the King.” 

“Oh of course Ma’am, I will tell the King of when you plan on making it to see him.”

“Thank you Aaron.” Helvetica dismissed as the Royal Messenger made his leave. 

The time from when Aaron left till the point where Helvetica was getting ready to leave for her meeting with the King moved a lot faster than she would have hoped for. While her outbox did seem to have a lot more papers in it ready to be moved to their next destination, the inbox was still a mountain of information that she wasn’t sure she would ever get through. Maybe she could get Gaster to come and help her before they left for home tonight. He was good for going through some of the papers that didn’t need her direct signature, and it would give them something painful to do together. Helvetica smiled as she made her way out of her office, when they were first starting to date they used to help each other with paperwork all the time. As two workaholics it was hard to think about having dinner if there was work that needed to be done. Sitting in each other's offices sorting, signing, and processing paperwork, while incredibly boring, was in large part what connected them those first few months. 

Before Helvetica knew it she was standing in the Entrance Hall waiting for the King’s escort to bring her to the King for their meeting. The Entrance Hall never failed to impress, it was a long hall of gold and glass. The window were so large that they were able to allow for the light from the glowing stones to enter into the building in a white glow. Helvetica was never quite sure how it worked, as it always made it seem as if they were on the surface with how much light was let in, making the interior gleam. The architects of this hall must have had their work cut out for them when they started. 

“He’ll see you now Ma’am.” A zombie monster came out of the side door to collect her.

“Hello, Evering. How are you today?” Helvetica asked smiling at the zombie.

He looked less than pleased. “Eh, ok I guess, Ma’am. Can’t complain. Follow please.” And Helvetica did. Evering was never one for much conversation so Helvetica left it alone, besides Evering never seemed to be doing much that he cared to share. “Here we are Ma’am, he’s waiting for you inside. Have a good day.”

“Thank you Evering, and to you too.” Helvetica said opening the door to the throne room and entering. Inside was a large white room with a bed of flowers surrounding the King’s Throne in the center of the room. The King himself was standing behind the Throne crouched while seemingly talking to something. “Your majesty, you called for me?” Helvetica asked still standing near the door. They might be friends but it was always good to keep some professionalism between them. That included not fully entering the throne room until invited in.

“Oh, Helvetica. Come here please, I have someone I wish you to meet.” The King turned to her and motioned her over.

“Father, she’s already met me.” Helvetica heard a small voice she did not recognize on the other side of the King.

“Yes, yes, but not since you have remembered who you are my child.” As Helvetica approached she noticed that the King was talking to a golden flower. So it was true. The King really did think that the talking flower monster was the reincarnation of his dead son. Oh, dear, this could be an interesting conversation. Maybe she should get the King to answer a few questions, or ask the flower some questions, and figure out which one thought that this flower was actually was Asriel and which one was being manipulated. It was hard to tell if the King was projecting his will for his child to have returned on the flower, or if the flower was tricking the broken hearted King.

“My King? I see the flower has moved. How exactly did he do that?” Helvetica asked as she looked towards the middle of the room where the flower was initially found. 

“Ah yes, he just pops up where he needs to be, quite simple my dear.” The King said, yet Helvetica didn’t find that to be remotely a justifiable answer, it was too simple. “Anyways, Helvetica I would like you to meet my son, Asriel Dreemurr. Asriel, this is your new psychologist Helvetica Gaster, she’ll make sure that you are adapting to your new form well.” Shocked at the proclamation Helvetica looked from the flower to her King, noting that the flower seemed to have an unsettled expression as well.

“Uh, your highness -” Helvetica tentatively started. 

“What do you mean a psychologist?” The flower asked looking bored but sounding as if he was on the verge of tears. “I thought we were getting along so well dad. Are you unhappy?”

“What? No, no my son I just felt it would be for your benefit to probably see a psychologist. Your change is so drastic, it will probably be for the best that you speak to someone about it. Dr. Helvetica is the greatest psychologist in the Kingdom, so if anything is ever troubling you just ask her and I am sure she will be able to help you with any problems you may be having.” The King beamed at his ‘son’ while grasping one of Helvetica’s shoulders. Helvetica tried to smile at the flower in a way that didn’t come off as more concerned than confident. 

The flower scoffed at her and turned on it’s stem, “I don’t need no stupid Doctor.” It said before disappearing underground. This amazed Helvetica, which could be clearly shown on her face making King Asgore laugh.

“Where-” Helvetica started to ask motioning towards the ground where the flower stood just moments before.

“Ah yes, he does that,” the King explained, “like I said he goes where he wants to be.”

“So what, he can be anywhere in the Underground?” Helvetica asked, feeling a bit uneasy by the notion. 

“Oh no he stays within the walls of the castle,” the King said easily.

“How do you know?” 

“He told me,” the King smiled as he said this, as if he had all the confidence in the world that what he said was true. This made Helvetica even more uneasy than she was previously. “So will you do it?” The King asked grabbing her by the shoulders.

“Excuse me, Sire?”

“Will you be Asriel’s psychologist? I’m concerned for his mental health. Being a goat monster one moment, having your best friend die, being killed yourself, and then being reborn into a flower must be hard on the young one. It would mean the world to me if you would be there for his stability.” Helvetica looked upon her King’s smiling face and while she had some trepidations over the whole notion she could never say no.

“Of course my King. I would be honored to make sure that your young one is in the best health mentally as I possible can.” Helvetica was not surprised by the hug that the King gave her after her proclamation, he was a very tactile person when he was around friends.

“Thank you my friend. Now what was it that you wished to speak to me about?” Asgore asked as he let go of Helvetica and made his way to his throne.

“Ah, yes. Sire, Gaster has a new plan to take down the Barrier and he would like your permission to move forward with the idea.” Helvetica said in her business voice. 

“Seeing as he sent you and didn’t come himself I will assume that he does not think I will approve of this idea.” Asgore said sitting heavily in his throne. Helvetica smirked.

“You gotta admit that he does know how to delegate when controversial subjects rear their ugly head.” 

“Yes, well what is it,” the King asked looking less than pleased.

“As you know, your majesty, the prophecy says to take down the barrier one needs seven human and one monster soul.” 

“Correct.”

“Well, Gaster has calculated based on the amount of energy output that his previous experiments have shown, about one megawatt is enough to make the barrier wobble. This is great because it proves that it is very possible that we can take down the Barrier through pure force alone. Unfortunately that just so happens to be the same input as there is output from the CORE, thus why when Gaster fired the cannon a few months ago the whole CORE went down.” 

“Yes, I remember.” The King said hoping to get to the point.

“Well, based on that Gaster is summising that if we could potentially get seven canons all firing at the same time towards the Barrier that the likeness of success is very high. We could -”

“So Gaster wants to build seven different COREs?” Asgore interrupted looking skeptical. Helvetica laughed, this was why she went to the King and not Gaster. While the King was great in many respects, he was not a scientist and Gaster hated dealing with nonsensical questions.

“No Sire, not only do we not have the resources for such a thing, we also don’t have enough places to effectively place another CORE. The CORE was placed on the largest reserve we have. There is no real way that it would be feasible to make another, never mind seven. What we were thinking of instead was something more complex, in which we would be able to use magic as well.”

“Ok, explain?”

“So the idea is to collect souls to be placed in a source that will be able to use concentrated magic in a blast to aim at the Barrier. This energy output from the magic would be equal to the output of seven cannons firing at the same time.” Helvetica explained quickly.

“Souls what souls? Humans have not come down here, since …” Understanding the King’s hesitance Helvetica continued.

“Not human souls, monster souls.”

“What? Are you two crazy?”

“I know it’s not exactly the most ethical of ideas, your majesty. Yet, if we can gather seven hundred and fifty souls-”

“Wait a seven hundred? Where exactly are you expecting to get these souls?”

“Well, I was thinking the inmates could-”

“Wait, wait. You expect me to agree to a plan that includes a seven hundred inmate monster souls?”

“Not right away, of course not. I’m here to convince you.” Helvetica said with a disarming smile. 

Asgore was not amused. “Continue, I would love to see how you are going to convince me.”

“Thank you sire. Gaster has calculated that about seven hundred and fifty monster souls should equal the same amount of energy seven human souls would be able to give off when encountering the Barrier. He believes that the magic energy that will be produced from the soul would be enhanced by the CORE energy output and together the amount of energy that is being discharged should be able to take down the Barrier for good.” Helvetica said excitedly. 

“We know that asking the average civilian of the Underground to sacrifice their life for this will not be looked on favorably. So we concluded that our best bet would be to use seven hundred and fifty of the thousand inmates that have no life beyond their cell walls. Their sacrifice would be to help the whole of the Underground.” Helvetica exclaimed positively.

“You talk of those monsters as if there were nothing more than material to be used.” The King groaned.

“Sire, no offence, but you know as well as I that those poor souls have no life outside of the dungeon that they have been placed in. I understand the desire to make sure that they are not being manipulated or being placed in situations that they do not want to be in, but that line has long been crossed. They do not ask to be used in experimentations of behavior control, but that is not going to stop us. We need to understand them and to help prevent others from being put in their place. In the long run we have been very successful, there hasn’t been a new inmate in tens of years. 

“With the advancements that we have learned in rehabilitation and prevention has been a great benefit for the whole of the Underground. I’m not saying we are going to force seven hundred and fifty monsters to be randomly picked from the dungeons and experimented on, I’m suggesting that we give them the option to help the Underground once more. They will be given the choice to have their soul harvested for this experiment to hopefully free all of the monsters within the Underground.” Helvetica proclaimed, willing for the King to understand that what she says is not only true but their best option not only for Gaster, but potentially for the inmates as well. 

“If you were in their place majesty, would you rather rot in a prison cell for the rest of your existence, never being allowed to leave no matter how long you wait. Or would you rather help the rest of the Underground with the promise of your conscious release. Neither option is the one you might want, but you can take the option that is the best of both evils.” Helvetica ended her speech watching her King to see what he would say.

The King gave a long sigh and rubbed his brow. _‘Shoot I lost,’_ Helvetica thought sadly.

“Helvetica, I don’t think -”

“She has a point you know.” A voice from behind Helvetica exclaimed surprising them both. Looking behind her Helvetica was surprised to see the Asriel flower. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you two. I just figured I should come to talk to you father after I stormed off, and caught Mrs. Helvetica’s argument to take down the Barrier.”

“No, of course, you are more than welcome Asriel. As the Prince of course you are allowed to listen in.” Helvetica had to suppress the grimace at the King’s words. She didn’t know if it was right to trust this small flower so openly. 

“Thank you father.” Asriel said gratefully. He then disappeared and popped up once more next to Helvetica. “As I was saying, Helvetica is right. You should at least give the inmates the choice. They should be the ones to say whether or not they want to give their lives to the Underground, rather than live the rest of their lives in imprisonment. I say you should support the good Dr. Gaster, he’s trying to help the whole Underground.” Asriel was joyful during his speech, bouncing on his little stem. The sight made Helvetica smile. Maybe she was wrong about the small flower maybe he wasn’t being manipulative.

The King looked at his son and slowly nodded. “One last question, how sure is Dr. Gaster that this will be a success?” He asked Helvetica.

She smiled disarmingly. “Every experiment has an element of being unsuccessful, it's all based on theories and hypothesis. That being said, you know Gaster would never have even suggested such an experiment if he was not highly positive that this will work.” Helvetica stated with confidence.

The King pause for a moment thinking over Helvetica’s argument and his son’s support. Finally, he sighed in defeat. “Ok, you can go through with this. But I want every prisoner to sign their consent if they agree to give their soul. And I do not want a single person to feel pressured when asked to give consent. Do you understand Helvetica? If there is even a question on whether or not that they are giving their consent, you are not to use them for your husband's experiment. Even if you just need one more soul you will not use them.” 

“Of course, I understand your highness.” Helvetica agreed with a bow. 

“Good. Now I would like to talk to my son. If you wouldn’t mind being here tomorrow for his first official meeting?” The King said expectantly. 

“Of course, I will see you tomorrow morning. Does 8 am work for you Asriel?” Helvetica asked the small flower. He nodded.

“Sounds great, see you then.” Asriel agreed. Helvetica nodded and left the two royal monsters in the Throne Room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update: February 18, 2016  
> -Clarified some confusing story points


	4. Chapter 3: Giving Permission

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long hiatus. I updated my other chapters for dialog, history, and I changed the amount of souls needed to 750.   
> Hope you enjoy.

Surprisingly, it only took about a month to gain more than seven hundred and fifty inmate signatures, agreeing that Gaster could use their souls in his newest experiment. Helvetica knew that some of the monsters within the dungeons would agree, but she never expected that almost eight hundred of them would. Even now she was standing on the other side of a one way mirror watching as the newest monster gave their consent, signing the paper saying that they agreed with the procedure. Gaster stood next to her watching the process as well. 

“Interesting, no? When you told me that we had to get the inmates to sign their consent I was convinced that none of them would agree and I would have to think of something else.” Gaster said quietly as they watched the inmate be led out of the room who was smiling ear to ear. “Creepy.”

Helvetica couldn’t help but laugh. “That was Jocular Jo, he’s always smiling like that. Though I was sure we could get the seven hundred and fifty signatures, if you noticed I didn't put a cap on when we had to get them by. Even if it took years I was sure we would have gotten them. I’m very surprised that they need absolutely no persuasion. I mean I’m grateful, saves us the headache, but I fear that Asgore might think we are manipulating them.”

“Well, you are recording these meetings. He will not be able to deny that there hasn’t been any.” Gaster said confidently.

“True, he will definitely hear them be asked, have it explained, them say yes and my staff making sure that they understand what they are signing. I mean after the first seven hundred we have started focusing on lightly trying to make them not want to sign it. It’s turned into quite the experiment.” Helvetica sighed.

“My dear?” Gaster asked concerned.

“It’s just that, well, except for a dozen they’ve all signed it so far. It makes me wonder about the conditions that they are in. Do they feel forced, even though we are not necessarily forcing them?” Helvetica asked in a way that was less about pity and more about trying to understand a problem.

“I’ve never seen the dungeons. Are they dingy, dirty, unsafe places?” Gaster asked leaning back against the one way mirror as the next inmate came in and was being explained what was happening. 

_“So Grenda, how have you been lately.” Was heard over a speaker system in the observation room._

_“Good.” The monster replied._

“No Gaster, it’s not a movie set,” Helvetica laughed at her husband's description. “It’s a rehabilitation center. They have a nice bed, their own space, it’s clean, they get good food, they have games and other entertainment. It’s not paradise but it’s not all that terrible either.” 

_“Very good. Now Grenda, do you know why we called you in here today?” The staff member, Dr. Roberson, asked politely._

_“To help free monsters from the Underground, right? They’re all talking about it out there.” The monster responded quietly._

“So we can assume that it’s not due to their environment.” Gaster said.

“Maybe …” Helvetica thought for a moment before making her way to the door. “Be right back.” Gaster just watched as his wife left the observation room and then enter the exchange room moments later.

_“Correct now … Oh Dr. Helvetica so nice of you to join us.” Roberson exclaimed, confused by their boss’ appearance._

_“It’s very nice to see you both as well. Grenda how have you been lately?” Helvetica asked as she took a seat next to her staff member._

_“Can’t complain.” Grenda said pleasantly._

_“Very good. So you know why you are here?” Helvetica asked, Grenda nodded._

_“We were just about to go over the details.” Robertson said, knowing that Helvetica didn’t actually need him to tell her that._

_“Excellent. I would like to be here if neither of you mind.” Helvetica said happily._

_“No, I don’t mind.” Grenda said smoothly._

_“More than pleased to have your company,” Robertson exclaimed. “Now, you said you know why you are here due to people talking about it.”_

_“Yes.”_

_“What do you mean everyone is talking about it,” Helvetica implored. “Do you mind telling me some of the conversations that are going on?”_

_“Sure, doc.” Grenda said smiling. “Dr. Gaster, your husband, is working on taking down the Barrier. Everyone knows that. So you all are collecting names to help with his newest experiment. You guys want to collect souls from us monsters and use them to take down the Barrier. I’m not really sure about the particulars of such a process, I’m not a scientist. But Beck, the alligator monster who was a scientist, you know him right?” Grenda asked, both doctors nodded and Grenda continued._

_“Ya, he said that it was sure to work. That Dr. Gaster is so smart that there was no way that he would ask for such a thing and then not expect it to work. He said that it was our best bet at getting out of here. Most of us are going to be alive for a very long time, Dr. Helvetica, you know that. While I know you want to get us out of here, King Asgore, well he doesn’t we all know that too. We aren’t going to get out of here for being good, we’re going to get out of here by being dead. So most of us have been talking. Why not do something worthwhile with the life that we have now? Helping Dr. Gaster and freeing the monsters of the Underground, now that’s a legacy worth having. I could be one of the hundreds of souls that actually made a real difference.” Greda explain, looking excited when she was done. Helvetica looked like she was contemplating this answer._

_“Grenda, do you feel forced to say yes?” Helvetica asked._

_“Forced? Nah, doc if anything I guess I’m a little excited.” Grenada explained._

_“Do you think that you will get something from this? Like recognition from the fellow inmates?” Helvetica pressed._

_“Nope, they don’t care if I say yes or no. It’s a personal thing, a personal sacrifice, nothing to do with the rest of them.”_

_“Will you tell the other inmates what you decided?”_

_“Ya, probably.”_

_“Did you know that, Johnson said no?”_

_“Ya.”_

_“What do you think about that?”_

_“His choice ma’am.”_

_“What do you think the other inmates think about Johnson’s decision?”_

_“I don’t think anyone cares.”_

_“If you tell the other inmates that you said no, what do you think they will do.”_

_“Nothing?”_

_“And if you tell them you said yes, what do you think they would do?”_

_“I don’t know, probably say good job?” Grenda said getting tired of Dr. Helvetica’s questions._

_“I see, well, Dr. Robertson please continue.” Helvetica said turning to her colleague._

_“Thank you, Dr. Helvetica. Now Grenda …”_

Helvetica stopped listening. Going over what she gained from Grenda in her head, it didn’t seem as if there was pressure on the inmate. Yet, that didn’t necessarily mean there wasn’t. They are obviously talking about it, that alone could sway people from one side to the next. Not to mention now most of them are saying yes. It is very possible that to feel part of the social group that they are in they feel like they need to say yes. 

As Grenda started signing her name and more explanation was given Helvetica concluded it was too late to make any real changes now. They needed seven hundred and fifty signatures, and they got them. Now all that was left was for Gaster to figure out how to implement the plan. Together all three inhabitants left the room, Helvetica wished Grenda and Dr. Robertson a good day as they made it back to the dungeon.

“So I guess I better make this work, huh.” Gaster said coming to stand next to his wife. 

“They have so much faith in you,” Helvetica said “I’m sure it is not misplaced.” She looked at her husband and rested her head on his cheek bone making him smile. 

“Right. So we’ll meet later tonight in your office for the last of the paperwork overflow?” Gaster asked as he started making his way down the hall to his lab with Helvetica following. It was almost 8 am he better start the day, and Helvetica had to get to the King’s palace for her appointment with King Asgore’s flower son. 

“Oh yes, final stretch.” She smirked, excited by the notion that her workload was about to get back to normal. Who would have thought that missing a few days of work would result in a month worth of overload. “We could even go over some of your ideas for the vessel for the souls we are going to be collecting soon. Are we still thinking something organic will work best?”

“Yup, brought it up with my colleagues and they all are in agreeance. Something organic would probably not only be the easiest to work with, but also the most natural, as natural as we can get anyways.” Gaster said. “Still going over what exactly we should use. We are thinking a body would be best, but to use a living body would be close to torture for whoever it is. And death doesn’t happen in a convenient way for us monsters to make it possible, dust can’t exactly be a vessel. Dr. Alrep suggested we use something like a plant. What with there always being Vegitiods around and now this new Flower monster it’s obvious that souls can inhabit a plant matter as well so I guess that would work. It just seems like something that would be hard to control. I mean Vegitiods insist that you eat them to no benefit to themselves. It’s not exactly the most rational plant.” Helvetica stopped her husband and rested her head against his.

“This is where we must part my dear. I’m sure you will figure it out. We can think on it more tonight as well.”

“Oh right, you're meeting with the Flower today. How is he anyways?” Gaster asked. suddenly intrigued. They don’t talk about the flower much, but he did find it interesting that it did infact exist. Neither of them were that keen on accepting that it was in fact the King's son though. Originally both Helvetica and her husband were convinced that there must be some sort of misunderstanding. Yet with every meeting Helvetica was becoming more and more convinced that she might be wrong. 

The flower knew things he shouldn’t about the young prince. Yet he definitely did not have the same demeanor about him that the young prince did. Helvetica was able to meet the prince a few times before his untimely death, and the one thing that she would never forget was the child's soft and calm nature full of positivity. The flower, well, he was not necessarily like that. As a psychologist for more than 50 years Helvetica could tell when she was being lied to, especially when it came to emotions. If she didn’t know any better she would be convinced that this child had no emotions, but tried to play it off as if he did. It was interesting to see the flower recognize that something he said should elicit an emotional response and then become confused when he didn’t. 

“He’s doing well. We’re working through some emotional stuff at the moment. But he seems to be overall …. um, happy.” Helvetica said.

“Well as long as the young thing is happy. It must be nice for Asgore to have something that reminds him of his son around.” Gaster said.

“Oh yes, the King is very pleased about the notion that his son is alive once more. Now I must go my dear, or else I’ll be late. See you later tonight, my office.” She said as she rested her head on his once more before making her way to King asgore’s palace. 

“See you then my dear.” Gaster called to his wife. Waving once more Helvetica turned a corner and paused. She placed her hand over her chest and took several deep breaths, the baby had been starting to act up again. It’s been causing her … discomfort … in the form of a dull ache in her chest. Overall it’s been nothing to complain about but it’s been constant for a while now. 

She should probably go see her Obstetrician soon if it persists in the next few weeks. She was hesitant to do so though in fear that they would advise her to take more days off of work. She’s almost all caught up, she really didn’t want to start back at square one again because she needed to take another few days off. She was sure it was just the baby growing, nothing to be worried about.

She sighed before continuing on her way to the palace. Entering the Throne room Helvetica got ready to have her meeting with the young flower Prince. He was waiting like usual in the middle of the Throne room looking towards his father's seat.

“Asriel, how are you feeling today?” Helvetica asked cheerfully. The flower turned to look at her a bored expression on his face.

“I was thinking …” He started and then stopped.

“Oh, what were you thinking about?” Helvetica implored.

“Do you think I am Asriel Dreemurr?” The flower asked her.

“I’ll admit at first I had my suspicions but the more I get to know you I feel like you could be, yes. What do you think?” Helvetica answered truthfully. She was surprised that this topic was coming up of its own accord. They haven’t talked about such intense topics yet, Helvetica wanted to make sure the flower was comfortable with her before she started outright questioning whether or not the flower was actually Asriel Dreemurr herself. Apparently they had reached the point where the flower felt comfortable with her to ask the question of his own accord. 

“Honestly, I don’t know what to think.” The flower said offhandedly. Helvetic sat next to the flower watching as he tried to think through his opinion. “I mean I have all these memories, of mom, of dad, of … Chara. But I don’t feel anything attached to those memories. I know some memories are supposed to make me happy, and others sad, but I don’t feel anything.” The small flower said looking towards Helvetica as if he expected her to help him find the emotions he was missing.

“I see,” she said thinking on the problem. “Tell me, do you feel the need to express emotions on new circumstances? Like if something good happens does it make you happy? Or does something bad make you sad?” Helvetica asked a bit concerned.

The flower thought a bit before answering. “Yes, sometimes. Like if dad makes a joke I laugh even if I think the joke is stupid or whatever.” 

“Hmm, but what about when something unexpectedly happy happens.” She pressed. “Like if your father gives you a present, or he does something nice for you.” 

“Umm, I don’t know. He just makes stupid jokes.” the flower said a little perturbed.

“Hmm, well keep an eye out for it. I’m sure you will be able to notice when something nice is meant to happen, take note. That way we can talk more in depth about your feelings.” She said.

“What happens if I really can’t feel anything?” Asked the flower. 

“We will have to face that when we are sure,” said Helvetica. “Right now we can only speculate, it could mean many different things. That you are depressed is such an explanation, but we can’t know until we have a clearer idea on what you mean exactly. Not laughing at your dad’s bad jokes does not a depressed flower make,” Helvetica smiled. the flower just looked up at her quizzically before looking back at the ground. They were silent for a few moments.

“How is Dr. Gaster’s newest experiment going?” Asked the flower. 

“Oh quite well,” Helvetica proclaimed. “we successfully acquired all the permissions we would need and plan on moving onto the next phase.”

“Which is?” Helvetica paused, how much should she tell the young flower. It was none of his business really, but at the same time she didn’t want him to feel shut off from her. 

“We don’t really know yet.” She decided to say. “We have some ideas but the whole process is very new so it’s hard to say exactly what we should do.”

The flower looked thoughtful before beaming up at her. “I’m sure he’ll figure it out. He’s so smart I don’t doubt he’ll figure out how to get the monsters out of the underground.” Helvetica laughed at the small flowers forced enthusiasm. 

“Now let's talk about you, did you have any more nightmares last night?” Helvetica asked. 

“Sorta, about passing the barrier and the humans attacking me.” The flower said. The rest of the meeting was about this newest nightmare, what it meant, and trying to determine how he felt about the dream. The longer Helvetica talked to the young flower she couldn’t help but hope that the worst thing the poor soul was experiencing was depression and not something far worse.


	5. Chapter 4: It was the worst of times

Dr. Gaster sat in his wife’s office going over some of the final reports to be filled out. Helvetica was at her obstetrician for an unscheduled check up. Initially Gaster was very worried, but Helvetica promised that it was nothing to get worked up about that it was just some discomfort nothing more. Not that this news eased Gasters worries, the mere fact that she felt that she needed to set up an unscheduled appointment said that this was more than common pregnancy discomfort. 

Gaster received Helvetica’s call later in the evening and was surprised when she said she would meet him in her office after. She still wanted to work on the last of her reports, excited to almost be done with the overflow and there was no changing her mind. So Gaster went to her office moments after getting the call, trying desperately to get as much as he could get done with one of Helveticas most trusted employee’s. 

“I can’t believe Dr. Helvetica would think about coming back here after her obstetrician appointment. Is the lady mad?” Asked Dr. Robertson as he was filling out one of the patient reports that he was given. Gaster laughed.

“You know my wife, she’s never happy if she knows that there is work to be done. If she was to go home all she would be thinking about is work and practically drag me back here regardless of whether or not she was told to rest.” Robertson signed as he placed the report in the outbox and picking up another.

“I don’t know how you live with her, don’t get me wrong she’s great, but honestly Dr. Gaster she would drive me crazy. If my partner told me that they wanted to work rather than rest I would tie them to the bed.” 

This made Gaster laugh harder, “You Robertson have no idea what kind of hellbeast would be released if I even suggested such a thing. No, it’s best I try and work through some of these reports before she comes back than even suggest trying to prevent her from doing it herself.” Gaster said getting back to his own reports. 

“I guess you’re right, I mean the other week we were working with a patient trying to determine whether or not they were a psychopath, I swear some of them are harder to identify than others, good actors you know. Anyways, Dr. Helvetica wanted a PET scan done, but no one was around to do it at the moment so she did it herself. God forbid she wait a few minutes.” Robertson exclaimed. “Enough about my work, it’s boring, what about you? Any new breakthroughs you can share?” 

Gaster thought before answering. “Actually we did get the Extraction Machine to finally work. It has successfully extracted and stored all seven hundred and fifty souls, well actually seven hundred and sixty we wanted a few for experimenting with vessels.” 

“Wow that was fast! How did you guys get it up an operational so quickly?” Robertson asked surprised at the doctor’s progress.

“Well we hypothesized a while ago that the soul was similar to the energy that runs through your walls and gives you electricity, only in monster bodies it gives us a soul that and operates our person. Drs. Alrep and Protile hypothesized a while ago that’s why ghosts find it easy to possess machines than other objects, they feel it’s probably easier on the ghosts to manipulate something that is built to harness energy than something that was not. So the idea was, just like we can extract energy from the core, we could also extract souls using a similar method. I won't bore you with the science, but let's just say it worked. The two doctors were very excited because it confirmed a lot of their hypotheses on energy harnessing, transfer, and storage.” 

“Oh, how exciting. So what’s left trying to find a vessel?”

Gaster nodded. “That is turning out to a lot more challenging that I first thought it would be. We figured that organic vessels will work better than mechanical ones and will be more stable. We just need to find the right organic vessel. Our first idea was to place them in some sort of plant life, but plants are not inherently sentient. We tried our first experiments today with a few plants. While it was possible to place a soul in them, nothing of worth seems to comes from it. It’s just a plant that can talk, which is really too much credit, they really only echo you. They don’t seem to have any magical abilities other than the ability to echo. Our other idea is to put them in a living body but we have no desire to torture anyone and we are afraid that is what will happen with a living person being forced to take on another being into themselves.”

“Well, isn’t that a concern regardless? There are so many souls that you are planning on putting in one vessel, isn’t it going to drive anything crazy? There would be so many personalities in one confined space.” Robertson asked genuinely curious.

“In the Extractor Machine the souls have already formed a singular fluid soul. We can take individual souls away from the main one, but when left alone they combine to create one single soul. It’s quite fascinating. We are not a hundred percent certain that all problems have been solved in the creation of the single soul as it is made up of hundreds but we are hoping that it will limit the adverse effects. If we were to put this soul in a living monster it would destroy the host's soul and absorb it into the larger combined one, possibly causing undue torture for the host. Our newest idea is that if we could somehow keep a body after death, that would allow us to place the soul without any need to cause torture.”

“Is that even possible?”

“I don’t know, but we are trying.” Gaster said. The two scientist were silently working for a few moments more before Gaster’s phone rang. “Hello?”

_“Hello, is this Dr. Wing-Ding Gaster?”_ The voice on the line asked pleasantly.

“Yes, who’s this?” Gaster asked suspiciously, no one called him on his personal phone outside of his wife.

_“This is Dr. Avory Wright, your wife’s obstetrician, would you have time to come down to my office? I would like to talk about the progress of your baby's soul with you both present.”_

Gaster stood in alarm. “Is there something wrong? Is my wife ok?”

_“I’m sorry I don’t mean to startle you. Yes, your wife is fine, unfortunately there seems to some complications with the new soul’s progress. There wont be any harm to your wife but I fear what the implications of my latest tests might mean for you child’s soul. If you wouldn’t mind coming to my office I can give you more details.”_ The doctor stated in a calm tone.

“Alright I’m on my way.” Gaster motioned to Dr. Robertson to start packing up. “I should be there in about five minutes.” 

_“Thank you Dr. Gaster, just tell the front desk receptionist that you are here to see Dr. Avory, she should point you to my office. See you soon.”_ The doctor said before hanging up. 

“What happened?” Dr. Robertson asked as Gaster started picking up papers and placing them in their correct location.

“I don’t really know yet, the doctor wants to talk to us both.” Gaster said as he places a few other items away and quickly scanned the room checking to make sure everything was where it was supposed to be. Nodding Gaster headed out with Robertson close behind. 

“That’s odd, right? Do you think everything is alright?” Robertson asked concerned.

“I really don’t know. That’s why I’m going to the doctor's office. Hopefully, I can lean more there.” Gaster said as he grabbed his coat near the door. 

“Well, tell your wife I said I hope everything is alright.” Robertson said as Gaster made his leave with a final wave. 

The walk from the Mental Research Wing, where Helvetica worked, to the Children’s Care Wing, where Helvetica’s obstetrician was located, was not far as they were both located on the Royal Hospital grounds. Which Gaster was grateful for as he was able to quickly make it to Dr. Avory’s office and not keep his wife waiting. If he was coming from his office in the Royal Labs it would have taken him at least twice as long. 

Entering the building Gaster went straight to the main building’s front desk. “Hello, I’m Dr. Gaster, I’m looking for Dr. Avory’s office?” He asked the monster behind the desk.

“Dr. Avory …. Dr. Gaster,” the monster repeated as they scanned the computer screen in front of them. “Ah, yes there you are. Right hallway, take the first elevator to the second floor, turn left, third door on your right.” They said and Gaster was off, finding the office easily.

“Hello, are you Dr. Gaster?” asked a small monster as Gaster opened the door to Dr. Avory’s office. 

“Um, yes I am.” Gaster said looking for his wife in the small waiting area. The monster smiled.

“Your wife is in the room down the left hall second door on your right.” The monster said sweetly before getting back to the work she was doing before Gaster showed up.

“Thank you,” Gaster said making his way over. Gaster knocked on the door that was indicated to him. 

“Come in,” Gaster heard Helvetica say in trepidation. Gaster quickly opened the door to see his wife standing in the room by herself looking worried. “Gaster! They said they were going to call you, but I wasn’t expecting you for a few more minutes.” Gaster made his way over to his wife wrapping her in a hug.

“I was at your office, trying to work on some of the reports before you got back.” Gaster said making Helvetica laugh. 

“Without me, how ever did you manage?” Helvetica asked humorously.

“I forced Robertson to help me, he’s a good lad that one.” Gaster said as he broke the hug and looked his wife.

“Remind me to give him a good bonus this year.” Helvetica said smiling beautifully.

“Hmm,” Gaster acknowledged. “So what happened, have you been told anything yet? They just told me there might be something wrong with the soul.” Gaster put his hand over Helvetica’s chest as he said the last part. 

Helvetica looked broken hearted before answering. “She hasn’t confirmed it yet, but I think … I think I’m going to lose the child Gaster.” Helvetica said almost bursting into tears.

“What?” Gaster asked astonished. “How? I mean … I …” Gaster was dumbstruck by the news. 

Yes, he knew his wife was having a bit of a hard time with the pregnancy, but to lose it altogether? He hadn’t given the notion much thought. Losing a child wasn’t something that was common among skeleton parents due to how the birthing process allowed for much more manipulative than for other monsters, allowing for most problems to be easily rectified. Such things as deformities in skeleton babies were basically unheard of because the parents were able to make the body that the soul would possess. The soul itself was made out of the mothers magic, as long as the mother had magic a soul could form, and all skeletons had magic because at the very least it was what held them together, so even if the soul took years it would form. Given all this, to lose a child was very rare indeed. 

“I’m sorry I should have gotten here sooner.” a voice said from the doorway. “Hello, Dr. Gaster, I’m Dr. Avory. Nice to finally meet you.” A harpie monster said as she entered the room and she extending her hand, which Gaster shook.

“Yes, same.” Gaster said. “I would be present more often if my wife didn’t schedule these appointments during work hours.” He said looking playfully at his wife, she just shrugged. “So what exactly are we looking at here.” Gaster asked trying to figure out how much trouble his wife and his unborn baby could be in. Dr. Avory motioned to a seating area of a few chairs. Both Helvetica and Gaster went to sit with Dr. Avory sitting across from them.

“Ok, so as you both should know, Dr. Helvetica has been having some pregnancy discomfort recently.” Dr. Avory started. “Now this isn’t much of a problem in most other types of monsters, but in skeletons this is very rare and is usually an indication of a much larger problem. In a regular monster most discomforts happen because the female's body is changing, getting larger, making room for another being in their system, organs are moving, the skin is expanding, and honestly the body is just not the same. As we know this doesn’t happen for skeletons, if anything the only thing that Helvetica should feel is as if there was a small weight on her soul. It shouldn’t cause discomfort, just feel differently. As the baby’s soul grows the weight should gradually become heavier and heavier, and you should only really notice it when the baby is about to be born. So being able to feel your baby's soul as something almost painful is disconcerting. Sometimes this might mean that the baby is syphoning magic too fast, which results in an unstable soul, or irregularly, which will also cause an unstable soul.” Dr. Avory took out some scans that looked like PET Scans of Helvetica’s soul that showed not only her soul but also a smaller fuzzy looking dot next to it. 

“As you can see Helvetica’s soul looks perfectly normal, but this is your baby’s soul.” Dr. Avory pointed towards the fuzzy dot. Helvetica gasped and grabbed the photo from the doctor.

“Oh, no that’s not right. What’s wrong with it.” Helvetica asked with tears in her eyes. From previous scans and research Helvetica knew that this was not what a baby's soul was supposed to look like. Babies souls moved around their mother's soul like a small electron going around a nucleus. Once upon a time it was hard to actually see what a new soul looked like, but with the help of new technologies they have been able to use scans to take photos of them. These scans usually showed a smooth ball of energy, to see a scan of an unstable ball of fuzz was something to really be uneasy over. 

“Well simply put, your child’s soul is unstable.” Helvetica gave a small choked sound when Dr. Avory said this. Dropping the scan Helvetica placed her hands on her mouth, she was distraught. Gaster couldn’t handle it and pulled his wife close for a hug. She cried and Gaster hushed her, telling her it was going to be ok. Dr. Avory looked sad for the couple and pick up the scan. 

“As you both know this is not something that looks good. Yet, it’s not something to lose hope over yet.” Dr. Avory said, making both parents look at her skeptically. “This isn’t a case of a soul not getting enough energy from it’s mother, and this is also not a soul that is leeching too much energy off of Helvetica. This is a soul that wants to be separated and be placed in its own body. Out of all the possible situations regarding unstable souls, this is the best case scenario.” 

Both parents looked at her questioningly. “What do you mean,” Helvetica asked hopefully.

“Well this is very rare within this rare circumstance, but every once in awhile there are cases of skeleton souls wanting to remove themselves from their host. While the souls is extremely weak, and thus the child itself will be very weak, it is very likely that the soul could survive. A soul that isn’t taking enough energy from their parents will just disappear from existence due to being too small, unstable, and overall just not being able to sustain itself. A soul that is taking on too much energy literally explodes once moved into a new body as it is trying to siphon more energy but can’t. A soul that wants early separation can usually sustain itself for a time but overall these monsters usually have smaller lifespans. With these souls there is a 15% chance that the soul will find a balance on its own and be able to live.”

“That means there is an 85% percent chance of what, it dying? Then if we are successful, what do you mean smaller lifespan? Are we talking they only a few years of life or are we talking about something that isn’t really different from other monsters?” Gaster asked looking skeptical, he couldn’t tell if he was happy that there was a chance or if he was angry that there was such a low chance. 

“Well there is a 85% chance that the soul won't take to the new body and it will dissipate during transfer, just like a soul that isn’t taking in enough energy.” Dr. Avory informed them.

“But there is still a chance,” said Helvetica.

“Are there any risks?” asked Gaster.

“Other than the obvious, no, there are no risks to Helvetica’s health. It's just like a normal soul transfer. You two will create the body you wish the child to have, and Helvetica shall transfer the new soul to the body just like a regular skeletal birthing process, one of the safest birthing processes that any monster species has.” Dr. Avory concluded positively.

“Ok, when do we get this done?” Helvetica asked excitedly. “Should we do this now? Should we wait?”

Dr. Avory held up a hand. “Please Helvetica remember there is only a 15% success rate, but as you two haven't worked on the body yet, I was hoping that we could do this early tomorrow morning. You both can create a body tonight and bring it in tomorrow and we can do the transfer. How does that sound?”

Gaster and Helvetica looked at each other. Helvetica had nothing but hope in her expression while Gaster still held on to his own trepidations. An 85% chance of losing their child, he could already tell that Helvetica was not going to take the loss well if that was what it came to. He should make some preemptive measures tonight, and make sure she wasn’t too excited about the child that they might not have. “That sounds like a plan.” Gaster said looking back towards Dr. Avory. 

“Great, now before you leave, it will be a few hours still till we plan to do the transfer. I suggest you create the body as soon as you get home. I also need to warn you, if Helvetica experiences pain in her soul tonight you need to do an immediate transfer. If not, the new soul can damage Helvetica’s soul as the pain will be a sign that the soul is trying to escape while hers is trying to keep it close. It would cause a rip in the two souls if this is to happen and the small soul will be lost. So if you feel anything that you might determine as pain, Helvetica, you must make the transfer. You can call me after the transfer at any time if such a circumstance happens.” Dr. Avory explained and both parents nodded in understanding. “Great, now my office will open at 7:00 am tomorrow, do you think you can make it in then or should we wait until later in the morning.”

“That would work fine,” Gaster said as Helvetica nodded in agreement. 

“Ok, great,” said Dr. Avory standing up. Helvetica and Gaster stood with her making their way to the door. Remember when you get home work on the body, if you feel any pain Helvetica you must do a transfer, otherwise we will meet here at 7:00 and please remember there is a 15% chance of success. It’s small, but it’s our best option.” They both nodded and thanked the doctor before making their leave. The walk to the river man was made in silence and the walk from the Snowdin port to their house was made in a lighter note. At their house they instantly started working on the baby’s body. All the while Helvetica was excited, holding on to the hope that she would see her child soon, rather than dwell on the notion that she might not see them at all. Gaster tried to make sure she understood the risk, but she wanted to be happy, not sad, so she only listened to him half heartedly. 

“Gaster dear, please. I know the risk,” Helvetica said in response to Gaster once more trying to explain that the likelihood of this working was very small. Helvetica held their completed child in her arms as Gaster held her from behind looking down at the small face. The baby’s bones were a little thicker than what was probably ideal, but it would have taken them a very long time to shave them down to a point where they were perfect. It didn’t quite matter to the two at the moment anyways, the baby was perfect regardless. Their first baby bones, how could it not be perfect, if this worked it would be a miracle baby. “I want to hope, not dwell. So please stop, tomorrow we will know for sure what will happen.” She turned to her husband and kissed him. “Now I don’t know about you but I’m pooped. Let's go to bed.” Gaster let go of his wife as they made their way to their room. Yet, while they turned off the lights and laid in the bed neither actually slept, instead they held each other with their tiny creation in between them both worried about what the next day might hold. 

 

_________________________

 

Gaster was woken by a scream. 

In a frantic search he looked around his room, eyes alight with magic ready for any oncoming attacks. His panic intensified when he noticed that the scream came from his wife who screamed once more. “Helvetica!” Gaster was terrified as his wife writhed in agony, experiencing what looked like the worst pain imaginable. It took a moment for Gaster’s mind to catch up with what he was seeing before he understood what was happening. The baby’s soul was trying to separate. Quickly Gaster grabbed up the small bundle of bones that still laid between them and grabbed his wife.

“Helvetica! Helvetica, can you hear me dear?!” Gaster yelled trying to grab his wife’s attention from her pain. Helvetica’s eyes focused on her husband's face and she let out a sob.

“G-Gaster! I-it h-hurts … GAAHHH!” Helvetica’s face scrunched up in pain as another wave of pure pain ripped through her soul.

“Hush, hush, my dear. I got the baby, see?” Gaster said holding the child close to her. Desperately Helvetica clenched the small body holding it close. “You need to do the transfer. Now Helvetica!” Gaster said desperately as he noticed that his wife wasn’t making a move beyond holding her child’s still body.

“Wha-what if it doesn-doesn’t w-worK, AHHH!” Helvetica tried to say as tears streamed down her face. “W-hat if they d-d…”

Gaster grabbed his wife’s face and made her look at him. “They could also live! We won't know unless you do this, if you don’t you both will die. Please Helvetica, please! Do the transfer dear, NOW!” Gaster exclaimed panicked. “Please my dear, I love you I can’t lose you too.” Gaster whispered tears starting to fall from his eyes as well. 

Helvetica looked at her husband for a few second more before starting the transfer. Fear enveloped her as she tried to focus on the process, this was the worst situation of the bad situation they were presented with. Please, if there was any deities out there watching over them right now, please let their child live. It was only a few second after the transfer started that the new soul was in it’s new body, practically leaping from it’s mother to the small body. 

The small body twitched once, and then again before going still. The two parents watched silently for a few more moments. “Please, please live.” Gaster sobbed touching the small things cheek bone. But there was no further movement. After a few more moments tears silently fell down Helvetica’s face before she sobbed and held her baby’s body close. Gaster sat back watching his wife. There was a sense of detachment for him after the whole ordeal. First waking up to the sound of his wife screaming, and now the loss of his child. The whole situation was horrifyingly unreal.

Slowly Gaster moved besides his wife and held her close as she cried. Every once in awhile he would stroke the small things head, imaging what could have been. Silently tears fell from his face. How were they going to get past this, as things looked right now their lives were over. He couldn’t even imagine what his wife was feeling, but if it was anything like his own torment, tomorrow looked to be a thousand years away.


	6. Chapter 5: When do nightmares end?

It was almost an hour later when Gaster finally found the strength to call Dr. Avory. True to her word, she was up and at their place as fast as she could get there. The first thing she went to do was check on Helvetica who wasn’t doing very well. Ever since the whole ordeal ended she hadn’t moved sitting in the middle of her bed desperately clinging to the still body of their child.

Avory tried to take the small thing away and that was when Helvetica even noticed that the doctor was there. With the small revelation she begged the doctor to tell her that the baby was actually alive. Gaster had to hand it to the doctor, she made a real show of checking the body over, but they all knew that the baby was not going to magically reanimate. It was always ironic to Gaster how magical beings couldn’t bring something like a baby to life through pure will alone.

When Avory said that the baby was not coming back Helvetica just ... stopped. Concerned Gaster went to his wife and held her, prompting Helvetica to turn and cry into his shirt. Avory gently put the child’s body down next to her on the bed and tried to get them to separate for a few minutes so she could check over Helvetica’s soul. She needed to check for any tears from the force the small soul placed on its mother. While Helvetica was against removing herself from her husband, Gaster tried as best he could to accommodate the doctor so she could check over his wife. Eventually they were able to maneuver themselves so that Avory could look, and she quickly deemed the soul fine.

With the major concern over with Avory decided that she should let the monsters grieve in peace. Carefully picking up the child Avory went to stand and make her leave. “Well I suggest that we should still meet tomorrow. We can reschedule the time-”

“Give him back.” Helvetica said her left eye burning a deep indigo from her magic.

“I’m sorry Helvetica. I can’t bring your child back.” Avory said disheartened. This just seemed to enrage Helvetica.

“I know that! I’m not talking about that!” Helvetica seethed getting out of Gasters hold; he tried to hold her back concerned for what his wife was planning to do. “Give me back my BABY'S BODY!” She yell holding out the one hand that Gaster hadn’t grabbed to hold her back.

“Wha-what you wan- I’m sorry but I don’t know if that such a good idea-” Avory started but was slammed to a wall dropping the child’s body.

“HELVETICA!” Gaster exclaimed surprised at his wife. He had never seen her use such powerful magic before. “What do you think you are doing? Do you honestly feel it’s a good idea to keep the body? What will that accomplish?”

“That’s right dear, it’s a body, it's an organic body don’t you see. Did it not even cross your mind once?” Helvetica asked her husband turning to him.

“… no … Helvetica you can’t be serious.” Gaster said appalled at what his wife was suggesting.

“Why not?” She asked getting down to his level once more by sitting on the bed. She held her husband's head in her hands and looked at him with a look that Gaster had never seen before, she was cracked. Avory was wrong; there was something wrong with his wife’s soul. “Our baby died Gaster but you can bring them back. You can use the Extractor Machine and give them a soul.”

“Helvetica this is our _child_.” Gaster tried to emphasize the word and bring her back to her senses. “What you are suggesting is … if we did this they would be a weapon, no longer our child. You won’t be able to raise them, they would be an experiment, and not something you could care for. Don’t you see?”

“No, Don’t You SEE!” Helvetica exclaimed distraught and her magic flared making Dr. Avory cry out in pain. Gaster looked towards the poor monster.

“Helvetica, you need to let Dr. Avory go. She won't take the body. Isn’t that right Dr. Avory?” Gaster asked her, hoping she would take the hint and leave.

“Right, I’ll leave the body.” Avory said gasping in pain.

“See? Now go pick them up and meet me downstairs ok? We can have some tea and talk about the prospect of what you are suggesting alright?” Gaster smiled at his wife and bonked their foreheads, hoping the move would help calm her.

“So you’ll think about it.” Helvetica asked calming somewhat.

“Of course my dear, you know I always listen to what you have to say.” Gaster said passively.

Helvetica gave him a small smile and nuzzled his forehead before getting up to collect her baby's body from the ground. “See you downstairs my love. Oh my baby, look what happened, we’re going to have to make sure nothing broke before your father fixes you.” She said as she left the room, as the door closed behind Helvetica Avory fell from her suspended position. Gaster instantly ran over to the doctor to check her over. Avory waved him off.

“It’s all good, no worries, serves me right for having my guard down. All mothers take the news differently, I should have known better.” Avory said smiling at Gaster.

“Even still, I would never have guessed she would have done that.” Gaster said helping Avory to stand. I think it is best that you leave, she’s definitely not taking this well. Are you sure that there was nothing wrong with her soul?” Gaster asked, remembering the crazed look that Helvetica had only moments before. The look did not fit the wife he had known for years, the prospect of there being something worse off with her was very convincing at the moment.

“I assure you Dr. Gaster, her soul is fine. This reaction was caused from grief. I can assure you of that. If you feel there might be something wrong, it is not physical. I think it would be best if you talk to one of her co-workers, maybe have one of them help her during this time of need. Even as great of a psychiatrist as she is, Helvetica can’t handle these emotions on her own.” Avory explained as they made their way out of the room and towards the front door. Helvetica was in the kitchen making some tea for her and her husband. “Keep an eye on her Gaster, have her try and rest. My best advice is that she just needs time.”

Gaster thanked Avory as he let her out of the house. Turning back to the kitchen area he saw his wife collecting a tray of tea and make her way over to the living room's coffee table. She sat down in her favorite chair and poured two cups for them.

“Are you going to join me dear? Or are you going to continue to stand near the doorway?” Helvetica asked in a collected tone. It was nice to hear after the scene in their bedroom.

“Right,” Gaster said making his way over to his own chair, passing the couch he noticed the baby’s body was lying there swaddled in a blanket he’s never seen before. He stopped and examined the body. “Where did you get the blanket?”

“Hmm? Oh, it's a scarf, found it in the closet since I forgot to grab the one in the room. I never really liked that red one.” Helvetica said sipping from her cup. Gaster hummed in acknowledgement before he sat in his chair and grabbed his own cup of tea. They sat in silence before Helvetica sighed and spoke up. “Gaster, I’m sorry about how I acted up there. I understand that I was over-reacting, but with the stress of that transfer, and the … the loss ... to see Dr. Avory try to take the child. I just couldn’t handle it right then.”

Gaster looked towards his wife for a moment before giving a quiet sigh of his own. He put the cup down before turning and laying a hand on her knee. “Don’t get me wrong my dear, I understand I do. To expect you to act any other way would be for me to act as if I do not understand the torment you were going through, what you _are_ going through. I do not agree with how you handled Dr. Avory, but I don’t really need to tell you that. What we still need to talk about is that one thing I can’t ignore. What you proposed in the room, about using our child’s body with the Extractor Machine, to give it a life; are you serious?” Looking at his wife Gaster contemplated her for a long while.

Sighing Helvetica answered. “Yes, I am.”

“You know this is an experiment, it might not even work.” Gaster tried to explain.

“I know.” She answered monotonically.

“You might not be able to raise it yourself.”

“I-I know.”

“If this worked, they would be a weapon, forced to go through testing, and when we finally try to take down the barrier, it has not been calculated that whatever we make would survive. The blaster we used incinerated from the amount of energy it had to harness.”

There was a long pause before Helvetica drew in a shaky breath. “Gaster, I want my baby back.”

Gaster stood and enveloped his wife in a hug. “I know my dear, but whatever I make in the labs will not be the child we lost today. It will be something-someone else. You understand that don’t you.”

Helvetica cried and shook her head. “Of course I understand that, yes, I understand that. But we could get them back.”

Gaster moved back and knelt near his wife’s chair looking up in Helvetica’s eyes. “No, we would not be getting back our child. We would be getting back a substitution. You have to understand that Helvetica.” Tears continued to fall from her eyes, breaking Gaster’s heart every second he looked at him with distraught in her eyes.

“I want my baby back, I didn’t even get to know them. Whatever comes of this experiment could be my baby and I would have them back.”

“That’s round about logic my dear.”

Helvetica lowered her head. “I know. It’s just, it’s possible, so why not try? Even if I cannot care for it myself I could still see them, still get to know them.”

Gaster looked towards the child himself. “Helvetica darling, I must admit you brought to my attention something that I had not even thought of before. I will confess that I will try this experiment regardless if we use this body or not, but it’s _our child's body_ , something that was meant to have life but then had that life stripped away. Can’t we use another? Something was made to take on the responsibility that we would force upon it. You’re thinking too much with your emotions-”

“Gaster how exactly do you expect to create another one?” Helvetica asked skeptically. “You know how this works. Skeletons can only make a baby if there is a new soul present in the mother. We don’t know why it happens, but trying to make a body with no intention of giving that body life has never worked before. Don’t you remember the Ghost Home experiments; skeletons tried to make bodies for ghosts to inhabit but every single pair failed to even produce a skull never mind a full-fledged body. Only skeletons that had a new life forming inside a mother could create a body and that is where we learned the one body per new soul rule. Would you really suggest that you take a new body for this experiment from soon to be skeleparents? We have the solution right here in our own living room.” Helvetica said motioning towards the baby’s body. “I understand your hesitance Gaster, but no matter what you say I want this done. So please, won't you do it?”

“I don’t know.” Gaster said somberly.

Sighing Helvetica stood up. “I understand. I need to sleep. I have an early morning appointment tomorrow.” She made her way to their room closing the door without looking back.

Gaster sighed and sat down into his chair steepling his fingers and leaning forward, he stared down at the body before him as he contemplated the choices before him. If he was honest with himself, he wanted this as much as his wife. He wanted to take this body and bring it to life, but what kind of life would that be for a child. To be experimented on, to be forced to harness a magic there is no reason to believe could ever be controlled, to be used and disposed of, without consent.

Wait, no.

There was consent. Every monster soul in the Extractor Machine had given their consent. They expected him to use them to take down the barrier. They had faith and hope that his newest experiment would work. Yes, Helvetica was thinking with her emotions, but not as much as he was. Every time he looked at the body he thought of the life he was denied, a life of a happy family. That’s why he didn’t want to use the body, because he was still thinking of what could have been, what should have been.

Closing his eyes Gaster tried to refocus himself. Thinking about the situation as it is now, not the could haves or the should haves. When he opened his eye once more staring at the body he saw what his wife did, an organic body, a vessel, waiting to be used. Not a baby, for that’s no longer what is could have been, just a vessel. Gaster laughed a bit and sat back, his wife was right, she was always right, and she was a genius. If not for her his one opportunity would have slid through his fingers.

Standing abruptly Gaster strode over to the vessel and gathered it up before leaving the house. There was no time to wait. Gaster grabbed his phone and dialed the numbers of his co-workers. They had work to do.

 

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What did you think of this chapter? Of the story? Of my writing? Characters? Be sure to review I want to know what I’m doing right/wrong. Or if I’m just writing into the void (Granted regardless I know that’s what I’m doing, I’m sure of it). Write me anything, even if it’s “You really suck/great.” “Chapters are too long/sort.” “Too many/few long words.” “Your story is confusing/on point.” “I have a cat/dog.” “The cake is a lie.” “Anything.” I want to know how this story is being perceived. Thank you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So interesting story change that I made I though people might find interesting.  
> Originally I was going to have Helvetica go to sleep crying about her baby not making it, and then Gaster was going to leave at the dead of night and take the baby's body to use for his experiments without telling her. In the end though, I felt Gaster has too much respect for Helvetica to go behind her back and do something like that without at least telling her first, so I had her become the one to suggest the possibility.  
> What do you all think about how it came out?

**Author's Note:**

> So I hope you enjoyed my first story on AO3.  
> 


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